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Metaphysical Accounts of Modality Metaphysical accounts of modality A comparative evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics David Chua Philosophy honours thesis Supervisor: Nicholas J.J. Smith The University of Sydney 12|10|2012 Metaphysical accounts of modality: An evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics ~Table of Contents ~ Introduction .................................................................................................. 3 1 Evaluating David Lewis’ genuine modal realism (GMR) ......................... 7 I. A plenitude of possibilities. ........................................................................................... 9 II. Not that ontologically crazy. ...................................................................................... 10 III. Genuine reduction. .................................................................................................... 10 1.1 GMR requires revision of moral beliefs ................................................... 12 I. Can egocentric desires ground morality? .................................................................... 13 II. GMR still generates moral dilemmas. ....................................................................... 14 III. Duplicate worlds to the rescue? ............................................................................... 20 IV. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 22 1.2 GMR gives unsatisfactory truthmakers for de re modality ................... 24 I. Humphrey’s counterpart is irrelevant. .................................................................... 25 II. The tu quoque strategy? ............................................................................................. 26 III. Appealing to the ‘paradox of analysis’? .................................................................... 26 1.3 Summary and preliminary conclusions ................................................... 31 2 Evaluating neo-Aristotelian modal realism (AMR) ............................... 32 I. AMR avoids ethical paradoxes. .................................................................................... 37 II. Causal powers are intuitively good truthmakers for de re modality. ...................... 37 III. AMR is close to ordinary language semantics. ........................................................ 38 2.1 Does AMR provide unsatisfactory explanations? .................................. 40 I. Are powers suspicious truthmakers? .......................................................................... 40 II. Does AMR offer the wrong direction of explanation? .............................................. 42 2.2 Does AMR preclude genuine possibilities? ...................................... 47 I. AMR precludes the contingency of the laws of nature? ............................................ 47 II. Global possibilities. ..................................................................................................... 48 2.2.1 Theistic Aristotelianism ........................................................................ 50 I. Omnipotence is an unsuitable ground for possibility. ............................................... 51 II. An omnipotent god renders modal epistemology mysterious. ............................... 53 III. A note on weak theistic Aristotelianism. ................................................................. 54 2.2.2 Pure Aristotelianism ............................................................................. 56 I. Pure Aristotelianism accommodates alien properties. .............................................. 56 II. Agnosticism regarding distant possibilities. ............................................................. 58 2 of 66 Metaphysical accounts of modality: An evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics III. Is conceivability a good guide to possibility? .......................................................... 59 IV. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 60 3 Conclusions ................................................................................................ 61 I. The space of metaphysical possibility. ........................................................................ 61 II. Truthmakers. ............................................................................................................... 61 III. Analysis. ...................................................................................................................... 62 IV. Ontological commitment. ......................................................................................... 63 V. What about possible worlds discourse? .................................................................... 63 ~ References ................................................................................................... 64 3 of 66 Metaphysical accounts of modality: An evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics ~ Introduction Consider the following alethic modal claims: (1) There could be more people in Australia than there currently are (2) Necessarily, all humans are animals These claims seem to be intuitively true. But why, and in virtue of what, are they true? According to one well-known view, truth is “the conformity of thought and being”;1 that is to say, there has to be some reality to which a truth corresponds.2 Closely related to this view of truth is the thesis that truths have truthmakers, “some existent, some portion of reality, in virtue of which that truth is true” (Armstrong 2004: 5).3 If modal claims have no truthmakers, or do not conform to reality in any way, the need for an error-theoretic or semantically revisionary account of alethic modal discourse looms. Such a path comes with its own attendant difficulties, for alethic modal discourse is indispensable to disciplines that are not obviously error- theoretic—for instance, ethics, logic, and the empirical sciences. A realist metaphysical account of modality thusly aims to preserve the truth of common sense modal claims such as (1) and (2) in a straightforward way: by identifying some objective part of reality to which modal truths correspond. 1 Aquinas (1981: 1 q.16 a.1). 2 Strictly speaking, truth as conformity to being is similar to, but not identical with, a correspondence theory of truth, given that the former need not involve the claim that there exists a relation of correspondence between propositions and the world. 3 The truthmaker thesis is admittedly controversial, not least because there is little consensus as to how widely truthmaking considerations apply—for example, what are the truthmakers for analytic truths, or negative existential truths? I do not take an explicit stand one way or the other with respect to these questions in this essay; however, the need for substantive and plausible truthmakers for modal truths remains a useful means by which I will adjudicate between rival ontologies in this essay. 4 of 66 Metaphysical accounts of modality: An evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics In this essay I will evaluate two different realist metaphysical accounts of modality: David Lewis’ (1986) genuine modal realism4 (GMR), and neo-Aristotelian modal realism (AMR) as put forth by Alexander Pruss (2011). These accounts differ significantly from one another in one straightforward sense. Lewis’ GMR is a reductive account of modality; that is, it attempts to reduce the modal entirely to the non-modal, by analysing claims of possibility and necessity in terms of claims about worlds and counterparts, which are themselves purely non- modal entities. AMR, on the other hand, is non-reductive in its ambitions; it analyses claims of possibility and necessity in terms of claims about the causal powers of actual objects, which are themselves modal in nature.5 Nevertheless, GMR and AMR share similar ambitions. Each account seeks to offer a conceptual analysis of alethic modal claims of possibility and necessity. In addition, each account offers truthmakers for modal truths, and in doing so they aim to ground modality in terms of more fundamental bits of their respective ontologies. In this way, neither account is afraid of ontological commitment (although, as we will see, their ontologies stand in sharp contrast to one another.) It is with respect to these ambitions that I will evaluate various aspects of GMR and AMR in an attempt to get clear on whether either account succeeds in providing a viable metaphysical account of modality. In §1 I evaluate Lewis’ GMR. On GMR, modal claims are analysed in terms of quantifications over concrete worlds and counterparts. GMR thus is committed the existence of a plurality of concrete worlds other than the actual world. There are two 4 I give it this name, following Divers (2002), to contrast it with ersatz modal realism, which treats possible worlds as abstract objects of some sort (e.g., sets of sentences or propositions). 5 See section (2) for an explanation of the sense in which ‘causal power’ is a modal concept. 5 of 66 Metaphysical accounts of modality: An evaluation of Lewisian and neo-Aristotelian modal metaphysics objections to GMR that I consider: firstly, that it leads to ethical paradoxes (§1.1); and secondly, that the counterparts it offers as truthmakers for modal claims are fundamentally irrelevant to the de re modal properties of objects (§1.2). In
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